


le pendu

by delhuillier



Series: Crucible [4]
Category: Fire Emblem Heroes
Genre: Morph!Kiran, Other, genderless Kiran
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 06:17:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14665043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delhuillier/pseuds/delhuillier
Summary: Kiran tempts Laegjarn to join the Order; and things between Alfonse and Kiran at last come to a head.





	le pendu

Even atop her wyvern, circling high above the battlefield, the odours of war still rise to meet Laegjarn. She has grown intimately familiar with the perfume of burning bodies and the rank, coppery smell of blood; years spent guiding Múspell’s armies out of loyalty to her father had allowed her to develop such a tolerance.

The battle seems to be progressing well. Though the Askrans had managed to surprise them, her forces are holding firm, and may be able to capture the Summoner like she wants. To end this war early would be a miracle, one that would save Laevatein from throwing herself into the flames in a desperate bid to please their unpleasable father.

Hand gentle on the reins, Laegjarn nudges her wyvern into a descent, angling towards one of her field commanders, Eimnir, a serious young man that wields potent dark magic, that’s more closely overseeing the battle from his wyvern mount. Soldiers need to see their general close by, not lording it over them from above.

“Eimnir.” she says, using one of the few spells she knows to help her voice cut through the wind and the sounds of battle. She looks around, mostly for his benefit rather than hers. “Where’s Ymir?”

“Fighting,” Eimnir replies. “He felt he’d be more useful that way. I let him go.”

Laegjarn smiles at Eimnir’s tendency to understate and minimise. She knows, and knows he knows she knows, that it’s less that Ymir felt he would be useful, and more that he wanted to stick a few arrows in moving, living targets. “Well, next time, I would prefer you keep him around. He is paid to protect you in battle, you know, not strike out on his own.”

“Understood, General.”

“In any case—report?”

“The Askran army is in full retreat by this point,” he says. “Insisting on dragging the corpses of the fallen with them, which is only slowing them down.”

“And the Summoner?”

“Cut off from the rest like you asked, General.” Eimnir pauses briefly, his eyes going unfocussed and distant as he consults with a soldier on the ground. “Managed to pass Breidablik to the prince beforehand, unfortunately. Of course, I will take full responsibility for that.”

“Loki will be disappointed,” Laegjarn muses. Not that she particularly cares. “For now, we’ll disengage. With the Summoner as good as ours, we may be able to force Askr’s surrender without further bloodshed.”

“As you command.”

After getting from Eimnir the location of where the Askran Summoner was being held, Laegjarn pulls away to cruise low and fast over the battlefield, bearing east. Around her, her other field officers are pulling her troops back, allowing the Askran army some measure of reprieve. Soon, she sees the Summoner’s cloak, visible against the white expanse only because of the golden designs set into its fabric, and the knot of soldiers surrounding them.

She sets down in a spray of snow, and swings off her wyvern, handing the reins to a waiting soldier. What Laegjarn expects to see is someone perhaps on their knees, hands tied behind their back, bruised face full of defiant resolve, someone utterly convinced of their righteousness. Instead…

This is the first time Laegjarn has seen the Askran Summoner in person, and, whatever she thought they might be like, this isn’t it. Aside from the unusually dark bruise on their forehead, they are entirely unruffled, and stand calmly in between two soldiers. When she approaches, they look up, and their face is scrubbed clean of anything resembling emotion.

It’s

(The sound of blade against whetstone rouses Laegjarn from sleep. She tracks the sound to the makeshift armoury tent and finds Laevatein there, sharpening her sword.

“What are you doing up?” she asks gently, going up to lay her hand on Laevatein’s shoulder. “It’s late, Laevatein…”

Laevatein shrugs her hand off, continues to buff and hone her sword. “I failed him,” she says dully. Lifelessly. “I could not do what Father asked me to. I couldn’t track them down.” She holds her sword up to the light of the uncovered lamp by her side. “I can’t fail him again. I can’t.”

Her expression reminds Laegjarn of the chiselled faces of the statues of old rulers of Múspell lining the approach to the castle. Masklike. Unmoving. Emotion does not touch it.)

familiar.

“Divine Summoner,” she says. “I am Laegjarn, general of Múspell. Well met.”

Kiran doesn’t respond, so one of the soldiers by them cuffs them, harder than necessary. Unbalanced, they fall to their knees in the snow, making almost no effort to catch themselves. They stay there, hunched over their knees, the fall of their black hair shadowing their face.

Laegjarn gestures for the soldier in question to be taken away, and steps forward to help Kiran to their feet herself. “My apologies,” she says, as she grasps their arm and pulls. “I instructed my soldiers to be careful with you.”

When Kiran’s on their feet, they have to raise their head to meet Laegjarn’s gaze, so much shorter than she are they. They lay their gloved hand on her arm and say, “Surrender.”

“What?” Laegjarn says.

The question is answered for her by a roar that shakes her down to her bones. She turns, horror waking inside her, and over the trees rises an enormous serpentine form. Six feathered wings spread out across the sky, and all fall under the Fell Dragon’s shadow. Grima—when had Kiran acquired his power? How had he managed to transform fully?

Had it been her mercy that had granted him the time he needed? Has Kiran been nothing more than _bait_?

“Surrender,” Kiran says, once more.

Grima turns his head contemptuously and exhales a roiling cloud of darkness, and her soldiers—the ones she had been leading for months and months now, the ones who had been nothing but loyal to her—die by the handful, flesh putrefying on their bones. Wyvern riders vanish in a snap of metres-long teeth. He roars again—delighted, triumphant.

“No,” Laegjarn gasps. She takes a step forward, uselessly, then turns back to Kiran. “You—”

“Surrender,” Kiran says for a third time, and then, so softly she almost misses it, “ _please_.”

She’s frozen for a moment: the dragon tearing through her soldiers, the quiet note of desperation in Kiran’s voice, for a moment it’s all too much to take in. 

But Laegjarn rallies. She always does. “I could kill you, you know,” she says. “Have you really thought this through? Call off your dragon.”

Kiran shuts their eyes briefly, though their face does not change. “I am not indispensable,” they tell her. “As long as they have Breidablik, it does not matter if I live or die.”

What had Askr _done_ to them, to make them this way?

“General,” Kiran prompts her. “Your soldiers are dying. They will keep dying even if you kill me. Your decision, please.”

They’re at an impasse now, the two of them, and Laegjarn’s at a disadvantage. She can’t kill them no matter how much she threatens them, because that would lose her her bargaining chip (a bargaining chip she isn’t even sure has any value)—but Grima can keep killing, and killing, and Kiran doesn’t have to lift a finger.

So she unsheathes Níu, and drops it to the snow in front of her. “All right,” she says. “I know when I’m beaten.”

_I’m so sorry, Laevatein._

=

It has been ten days since her capture, and the Order has done nothing save treat her with a sort of distant kindness. Nevertheless, Laegjarn can’t quite bring herself to relax: she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Alfonse and Fjorm to finally drop their courteous façade and do to her what they had undoubtedly done to Kiran.

Yes, it’s clear to her more than ever that Kiran had been broken, whether by torture or by some other abuse, by the Askrans.

So she had decided to give them nothing. If the Askrans, and Fjorm, are no different from her father, then there is no reason for her to cooperate. Dying by the flame is the same as dying by the sword, and at least this way she keeps her loyalty to her family and to her country unsullied.

Despite her refusal to give them any information, the Askrans had kept her anyway. Here she sits, on a rickety chair before an equally rickety table, confined within an abandoned house by enchantments woven by one of the Askran mages. She has been provided with a bedroll and all of the other comforts from which the other Askran soldiers benefit, and is fed the same as they are, and is generally treated well enough.

But any day now, she’ll be left to sleep on the hard ground or in the snow, and she’ll be fed bread found rotting at the bottom of the boxes of provisions. Laegjarn sure of it. Once they have tired of the carrot, they will apply the stick.

Yelling from outside draws her to the window. She shuffles over, her steps shortened by the chain and manacles binding her ankles, and peers out.

It’s a snowball fight. Of all things. Heroes from the Worlds of Blazing, Sacred, and Radiance, posed against Heroes from those of Awakening, Birthright, and Conquest.

It shocks her. Infuriates her, even. That the Askran army is indulging in such a childish activity during wartime boggles her mind. Do they not need to patrol the perimeter of this tiny village (whose inhabitants, she recalls with some guilt, had fled their homes upon her army’s approach) to watch for soldiers of Múspell? Do they not need to tend to their weapons or take stock of their provisions?

And behind all that is a faint, squirming feeling of envy. Commander Anna must be a kind, magnanimous leader, especially when compared to the blind brutality of Laegjarn’s father.

She notes the presence of Alfonse and Sharena within the chaos (Sharena, allegedly royalty, is in the middle of dumping an armful of snow down the back of Alfonse’s coat), but Fjorm and Kiran are nowhere to be seen. It’s not surprising: from what she’s seen, kept close by the Askran royals’ side these past days, Kiran hardly ever interacts casually with the Heroes, and Fjorm, though polite, tends to be rather more distant and reserved than her fellow nobles.

Sometimes, Laegjarn finds herself thinking about what Fjorm had said after the Askran army had captured her: _perhaps we might have been friends._ Perhaps indeed. Fjorm’s calm self-assurance and her devotion to her own country reminds Laegjarn more than a little of herself.

The sound of boots in the snow outside the door of her little domicile pushes her back to her chair. She’s just settling in when the door opens; it’s Kiran and Fjorm, as though the universe were acknowledging her ponderings. Fjorm enters first, Kiran shadowing her closely, their head bowed and gaze angled towards the ground.

Fjorm carries a tray of food: some kind of stew, as usual, a hearty bread, preserved fruits undoubtedly raided from the stores of the villagers that had once lived here, and a hot drink exhaling steam into the frigid air. She places it on the table, and says: “Good afternoon, Laegjarn.”

“Princess.”

Fjorm settles into the other chair across from her, straight-backed and proper. She folds her hands neatly on the table in front of her, giving Laegjarn the ridiculous impression that they’ve just sat down for a diplomatic meeting, and says: “I hope you are well?”

“No,” Laegjarn says. “I don’t see how I can be, seeing how your strategist had most of my soldiers devoured by their pet Fell Dragon.”

“Your father has done worse,” Fjorm reminds her. “And though you treated the people of Nifl well, you are yet loyal to him. You have no place to criticise us, especially when we only sought to defend ourselves.”

Laegjarn gives her a cool smile. “Well, as long as we are tarring people with the same brush, your involvement with Askr makes you no better.”

“I confess I found the plan to use Grima to force your surrender to be unnecessarily cruel, but—”

“Oh, that’s not what I mean, though that _was_ something like what my father would do,” Laegjarn says. She tilts her head towards Kiran, who’s standing by Fjorm’s side, their head lowered. “I mean your strategist. Surely you’ve wondered why they are the way they are? What your precious prince and princess might have done to them to make them so...obedient?”

Fjorm opens her mouth, closes it. She glances towards Kiran, and shifts uncomfortably in her chair. “That’s…”

“Your Highness,” Kiran says quietly. They look up, meeting Laegjarn’s eyes for the first time. “Please.”

Fjorm nods, grateful. “You have something to say, Kiran?”

The Summoner lays out their words with precision. “Alfonse and Sharena have done nothing wrong. Breidablik created me this way. As a cipher, fit only to command armies.”

“Created? I was under the impression your holy relic called the Summoner from a different world.” That, at least, is what Loki claimed. But then, that woman is a consummate liar.

“I was made with one purpose,” Kiran says. “And when my purpose is fulfilled, I will be unmade. Until then, my duty compels me to do whatever it takes to reach that goal. Including,” they add, after a minute pause, “the massacre of enemy soldiers.”

Emotion, or something like it, shades their words. “I...cannot do otherwise. I can no more resist...this...than you could…”

“...Disobey my father?” Laegjarn says softly.

Kiran closes their eyes, a rough outline of distress sketched on their pale face. “Yes.”

“I see.”

Her thoughts whirl through her head. So Kiran was created specifically to defend Askr—seen that way, their behaviour is not as strange as Laegjarn had first thought. And it could explain that desperation she had heard from them on the battlefield: imagine a Kiran that does not like killing, yet is compelled to do it anyway, ceaselessly, until their purpose is fulfilled.

Assuming, of course, that what Kiran says is true. Laegjarn still has her reservations.

“I trust them, Laegjarn,” Fjorm says. “And I trust Prince Alfonse and Sharena as well. Save your words.”

Laegjarn sighs, and crosses her arms over her chest. “You trust them in spite of the fact they kept details about Kiran from you?”

“They have done enough to merit that trust,” replies Fjorm, noticeably not contradicting Laegjarn’s assertion about Alfonse and Sharena’s secrecy. “They saved me from death after your father finished with me, and now they work tirelessly to restore my country.” She sighs. “But enough of this. This is pointless—we both know it.”

“Mm. Tell me, Princess, why have you come? I’ve told you time and again I will give you nothing.”

Though she had been wrong about Kiran, that changes her position not at all. She has her honour, and she will cling to it until she dies. Besides, betraying Laevatein, or facing her in battle—Laegjarn could never do that. It would destroy her dear sister, drive her into the flickering arms of the Múspellflame in a futile bid to please their unpleasable father.

“In fact,” Fjorm says, “I am here only because Kiran wished to speak with you. I couldn’t allow them to come alone.”

“Eat first,” Kiran tells Laegjarn, before she or Fjorm can get in another word edgewise. “Then, we can…”

For no reason Laegjarn can see, they let the sentence drop, and return to staring at the floor. Nevertheless, Laegjarn welcomes the lull in the conversation: the smell of the food had woken a beastly hunger inside of her.

She’s busy sopping up the last of the stew with her bread when she decides to speak again. “Summoner, I should tell you now: I won’t answer any of your questions. I will give you nothing about my father, my sister, or my country.”

“Then Loki?” Kiran says. “Not your father. Not your sister. Not your country. Just Loki.”

Laegjarn tears off a chunk of bread, chews, swallows, using it to give her time to think. Loki had never truly been a part of Múspell, and Laegjarn had never truly trusted her—if she can lie so easily to her enemies, she can do the same to her allies. Especially now that Laegjarn sees what Loki had told her about Breidablik—which she had asked Laegjarn to fetch for her—had been mostly, or entirely, false.

“That depends on what you want to know,” Laegjarn says carefully.

“She wanted Falchion.” Kiran pauses. “Breidablik, too? Fensalir? Fólkvangr?”

Laegjarn purses her lips. Well, Loki had made it a _personal_ request, not an official one that had to go through the chain of command. “She did ask me to capture you and your weapon,” she replies. “I suppose, too, she would want the others. She has said nothing about why.”

Kiran is silent, then, long enough for Fjorm to ask them: “Kiran, is something amiss?”

In response, Kiran pulls off one of their gloves. They hold up their uncovered hand: it’s blackened by some spreading corruption, thin and withered as though belonging to someone half a century older.

“Divine weapons,” Kiran says, “come with a price. You understand this well, do you not, Laegjarn?”

She does. Oh, she does. She saw what Sinmara did to her father: twisting his rage at the death of his wife and her mother into something monstrous. “Yes.”

“It is because they channel the powers of the gods,” Kiran tells her, and she feels her hackles rise, because Kiran doesn’t sound quite like Kiran anymore. As though something had, so very quietly, slipped underneath their skin to take control. “Gods that lie sealed within them. What, then, might someone accomplish, if they collect these vessels? What chaos might they unleash?”

Kiran meets her gaze. “And you want to free your sister, do you not? Help us, Laegjarn.”

“Help you?” Laegjarn shakes her head slowly. “I can’t. You would ask me to raise my sword against my own family? I can’t. Not when I have no way to know if what you say is true.”

It’s a pathetic excuse, even to her own ears. What Kiran is implying fits. Perhaps too well—yes, that’s it. It’s what they think she wants to hear. So she has no reason to listen to them, because all they will tell her is lies.

(An oh, she can hardly convince herself of that.)

“Leave me be,” she tells them. “I’ve no wish to speak with you further.”

The two of them leave her there, then, to dwell upon what Kiran had told her. If what Kiran had said is right, then she could not in good conscience refuse to lend them her power. And yet, to betray her sister so, when Laevatein is still in thrall to her father, could not end in anything but Laevatein consumed by the Múspellflame. And she could not lose another member of her family.

Gods. What should she do? What _can_ she do?

=

Alfonse stands at Kiran’s tent, not yet ready to push aside the flap and go see them. He’d heard from Fjorm that they had gone to see Laegjarn today, and what Kiran had had to say to her had been...troubling, to say the least.

(“They said that gods sleep within our weapons,” Fjorm said. “None of the legends have said anything like that: they talk of the gods’ blessings, not of their imprisonment. Prince Alfonse, what do they _know_?”)

Well, he’ll set that aside, and save it for later. There’s something more pressing he’d like to talk about. He takes a deep breath, and ducks inside.

Kiran sits quietly on a chair taken from one of the surrounding dilapidated houses, illuminated only by a lantern set on the canvas beneath their feet. Their cloak is off, and their gloves are too, and Alfonse finds it hard to breathe when he sees how far the rot has spread: their hands entire have been consumed by it.

“You missed quite the snowball fight,” Alfonse says, when he can find his words again. “The group led by the Lycian lords won,” he continues awkwardly, when Kiran says nothing. “Lyn, Eliwood, Hector. Roy. Lilina. You know.”

“I see.”

Alfonse sighs. “You aren’t going to make this easy for me, are you?” He steps closer to Kiran, drops to one knee in front of them for lack of a place to sit. He tries to catch their eye, but they’re staring off at some spot on the canvas walls—surprisingly childish, coming from them. “Are you finally willing to talk about how you used yourself as bait during the battle with Laegjarn?”

“We’ve talked about it.”

“Oh, we have not,” Alfonse says, a little more harshly than he intends. “Repeating ‘it doesn’t matter’ over and over again doesn’t count as talking about it.”

“It does,” Kiran says dully. “Because victory was ours. So it doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does!” Alfonse snaps. Realising the violence of his outburst a moment later, and remembering the relative thinness of the tent walls, he tries to calm himself. When he next speaks, his voice is gentler. “It does matter. You could have died.”

“And?” replies Kiran, brutal in their bluntness. “You had Breidablik.”

“Kiran,” he says. “Please don’t say that. _Please._ It’s true that we could do the ritual again, should you...should you die. But you wouldn’t be the same.”

“That is untrue. You know what I am.” Kiran hunches forward, very slightly. Their hands close into fists. “I can simply be remade in my own image.”

“But it is true,” Alfonse insists. “You’re your own person. Just look at when you summon duplicate Heroes—they’re all different, with different lives, different histories. And that _changes_ them. Any—any others like you wouldn’t be the same, because they wouldn’t have lived through what you did. You’re _you_ , Kiran, and losing you would be...”

Like losing Zacharias, all over again. 

Kiran shuts their eyes, something like pain passing over their face. “Alfonse, why do you insist on…”

Alfonse waits, but when they say nothing more, he presses them, a little. “What do you mean, Kiran? Why do I insist on…?”

The answer comes out, abrupt as ever. “Why can’t you just leave me be?”

Alfonse blinks. “...What have I done, Kiran? I don’t understand.”

“I—I can’t give you what you want. I _can’t._ And it...it hurts...” Kiran shudders. “To _see_ what you want and know that I can’t...I can’t ever...” They make a tiny, strangled sound, like breath catching in their throat. “That someday, you’ll realise I can’t ever measure up to—Zacharias—”

There’s that noise again, and it sounds so, so broken. And Alfonse realises that Kiran is _crying_.

“Oh, no,” Alfonse says. He stands, and pulls Kiran up off their chair, gathering their trembling form into his arms. Instead of trying to pull away, they slump against him, almost gratefully. “Oh, Kiran, I…”

They stand there for a while, the two of them. Every once in a while, Alfonse cards his fingers through Kiran’s silken hair, hoping, praying it comes across as comforting rather than something else. He wants nothing less than to force Kiran into something they don’t want to do. Especially because up until very recently, they have had so little conception of themselves as an _individual_ , one with autonomy, one that had the _right_ to dictate what happens to their own body, that had Alfonse asked them for—anything really, including sex—it just would not have occurred to them that they could refuse.

He is the prince of Askr, the country they had been created to serve. They would have submitted without hesitation, because there would have been no _room_ for hesitation. A tool is made to be used, after all.

And yet, Alfonse had been so awful about giving Kiran the space to figure out what they need to. He’d tried to push them into a role they didn’t want: the one that Zacharias had held, before he had been driven from the Order by his cursed blood. A confidant, a friend, a...

“Sorry,” he says, when Kiran quiets. “I’m so very sorry. I’ve been asking for too much from you, haven’t I? Far too much. Forgive me.”

“No, I...I just…” Kiran says, voice rough, “You’ve read the books. I am not complete. So why do you...when you _know_ I can’t truly give you what Fjorm could...or Zacharias could…” They sniffle. “I don’t understand. How could this be enough for you?”

“First of all,” Alfonse says, “Fjorm has her sights set on someone else, and Zacharias is...well. But secondly, no, I don’t know if it will be enough for me. But what I _do_ know is that I care about you. That I want to keep you safe. Isn’t _that_ enough?”

“...I don’t know.”

Alfonse laughs softly. “Fair enough. Because neither do I. A secret, Kiran: none of us ever really knows what will be enough in situations like this. All we can do is try.”

Kiran’s quiet for a moment, and then they say suddenly, “I’m sorry. For putting myself in danger.”

“It’s all right,” Alfonse says. “I know you don’t have a choice, sometimes.”

“Yes.”

They’re quite the pair, aren’t they? A living weapon created to defend a kingdom entire, and a prince who would sacrifice his body to Fólkvangr in a heartbeat if it meant he could protect his people. But at the same time, it makes a morbid sort of sense. Both of them would give up their entire being to save Askr—Alfonse by choice, and Kiran because that’s how they were made. There’s a kinship in that, isn’t there?

Alfonse cups Kiran’s face in his hands, feeling a shiver drag its fingers up his spine at how cold they are. He kisses their forehead lightly, and then pulls them close again, hoping that he can warm them, just a little. “Well, if you must put yourself in danger again, promise you won’t do it without warning me first. All right?”

“...All right,” Kiran says. “I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> "I am not complete." - Kiran, probably, before they take up a fire poker to murder Alfonse.
> 
> This was written in response to a prompt on the r/fireemblemheroes weekly writing thread that asked us to describe...a snowball fight. Yeah, really.
> 
> I've an entire alternate storyline written out for Heroes, and you can see some glimmerings of it here, in whatever is implied to possess Kiran near the end of their conversation with Laegjarn.


End file.
